Coca-Cola to make plastic bottles out of CO2

There's a lot more going on here than meets the eye. We're trying to get a CoalTL report together that will start to tie some of the things involved together, and we'll build on that in the future. It's complicated.

But, our computer/connectivity issues remain a plague on us - - in addition to Joe's health issues, which we still have to get somehow resolved - - and, since we might not be able to do as good or as coherent and thorough a job of it as we might wish, we wanted to introduce the issue/topic to you all so that the whole deal might be clearer as our reports on it do finally evolve.

And, this serves as well just to stay in touch, to let everyone know that we haven't just dried up and blown away, which is obviously now what some other folks would have preferred us to do.

Anyway, we've made many reports on the Princeton U/Liquid Light CO2 utilization tech's; and, thought this recent news release, as linked above, might be of interest. Some excerpts:

"Liquid Light Signs Agreement to Further Advance its CO2-to-Chemicals Technology - Targets further acceleration of The Coca-Cola Company’s PlantBottle (TM) Packaging Program; Monmouth Junction, NJ, July 20, 2015 – Liquid Light announced it has signed a technology development agreement with The Coca-Cola Company. The objective of the agreement is to accelerate the development of Liquid Light’s technology which can make mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) from carbon dioxide (CO2). Liquid Light’s approach enables more efficient use of plant material to make MEG. For example, a bio-ethanol production facility could make bio-MEG from the CO2 byproduct that results from converting plant material into ethanol. The technology has the potential to reduce both the environmental footprint and the cost of producing MEG. MEG is one of the components used to make The Coca-Cola Company’s plant-based PET plastic bottle". - - -

Coca-Cola has received a lot of negative press on their "PlantBottle(TM)", as above, which they announced with some fanfare a little while ago.

In essence, at a factory in India, they're fermenting stuff - which maybe could be better used as food in that poor nation - then distilling off the ethanol and shipping the ethanol to another factory in another country - forget which one at the moment - where the ethanol is converted, in place of raw materials ordinarily derived from petroleum, into polyethylene terepthalate (sp?), "PET", which is then shipped to wherever it is they make their plastic bottles, and so forth and so on.

Environmental groups are hammering them, maybe with some justification, saying that the combined processes of cultivation, harvesting, preparation, fermentation, distilling, all the shipping, etc., generate a lot more CO2 than is recycled in the bioethanol-based PET.

That aside from the consumption of potential food crops in a place like India.

Anyway, what you'll see now in some associated pieces of literature are graphics showing how CO2 is to be harvested from the bio-ethanol fermentation process, and then converted into MEG, which also goes into the blend of stuff used to make thermoplastic PET bottles, in addition to the PET made from the ethanol.

As we've documented previously, though, Princeton and Liquid Light have also developed the tech to make the ethanol itself out of CO2. And, recently, they, along with the University of Richmond and the US Gov have made the CO2-to-ethanol tech even better.

So, if Coca-Cola wanted to make their entire PET bottle, not just the MEG component, out of Carbon Dioxide, they could.

Anyway, sorry about the clutter. But, all of this as we see it offers some immense potentials for Coal Country in terms of industry and employment and enhanced value from our Coal-burning power plants.

That it isn't being openly investigated on a public basis, maybe even loudly touted and promoted, in Coal Country seems perverse, suspect, to us. Hopefully of interest. We will be following up on it eventually via CoalTL.

Twitter

Coal miners and industry officials, like Hamilton, voiced their support for Trump’s rescinding of the Clean Power P… https://t.co/zTabudTGa8

Staff at the fossil energy office complained bitterly of political interference that blocked public release of favo… https://t.co/us4jvZ1ipv